Cuba splits Latin America’s literary Left

Press, 10 May 1982, Page 24

Cuba splits Latin America’s literary Left

By

GEOFFREY MATTHEWS,

in Bogota

It is a row which has been simmering for some time, but it may have been the French singer, actor and Left-wing activist, Mr Yves Montand, who brought it out into the open. Interviewed on French television early this year, Mr Montand suggested it was high time “certain Latin American writers” who have long criticised Right-wing military regimes spoke out with equal eloquence to condemn repression in Cuba. Mr Montand named no names, but since he specified he was talking about Latin American writers . “of the highest category” there could be no doubt who he had in mind. Clearly, Colombia’s Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Argentina’s Julio Cortazar were his targets — and possibly Mexico’s Carlos Fuentes too. They are all fierce critics of dictatorships like the Pinochet regime in Chile but are

personal friends of Dr Eidel Castro and admirers of the Cuban revolution.

They also have close ties with the French Left Garcia Marquez divides his time between homes in Mexico and Paris, and Cortazar has lived in Paris for the last 30 years. Fuentes once served as Mexico's Ambassador to France. Mr Montand, of course, has no need to prove his Left-wing credentials but he is not politically colour blind. He starred in “The Confession,” a bitter indictment of Stalinist repression in the Communist bloc in the 19505. Likewise, he has condemned the recent crackdown in Poland.

The implication of his remarks about “certain Latin American writers” is that he regards them as colour blind. And some Latin American intellectuals have been saying the same thing for some-time.

Latin America’s literary Left is nowhere near as united as it once was. Just over a year ago Peru’s brilliant novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, who once cheered the Cuban revolution, finally broke with Havana, charging that the regime had become totalitarian. His works promptly disappeared from the shelves of bookstores and libraries in Cuba.

Vargas Llosa and Garcia Marquez have received more international acclaim than any other contemporary Latin American writers. In recent years both have been hotly tipped for the Nobel prize for literature, and their relations have sometimes involved some not-always friendly rivalry. In a much-publicised incident in Mexico City a few years ago, Vargas Llosa slapped Colombian’s face over a neverrevealed “matter of honour.”

More recently, Vargas Llosa, a socialist, has frequently

criticised what he views as Garcia Marquez’ “doctrinaire Left-wing politics” and he clearly includes the Colombian among those who “seem to seek to distinguish between repression of the Right and that, of the Left,” or “between good torture and bad torture.”

Now Garcia Marquez and Cortazar find themselves targets of a much more bitter critic: the outstanding Cuban writer, Reinaldo Arenas, who fled the Caribbean island nation for the United States with thousands of other Cuban "boat people” in 1980. Garcia Marquez, charged Arenas, “does not have the moral authority to speak of the supposed progress of education and culture in Cuba because it contradicts his own hypocritical acts.” Instead of sending his two sons to Cuba to enjoy the fruits of "such a praiseworthy educational system,” the Colombian sent one to Harvard

University in the United States, the other to Paris.

At Cuba’s bidding, Cortazar — claims Arenas — recently tried unsuccessfully to persuade Uruguayan critic Angel Rama to exclude Arenas' work from a literary anthology he was preparing. In the same way, the Cuban charges, Garcia Marquez tried (also without success) to use his influence with a Paris publishing firm to prevent publicaton of a French translation of an exiled Cuban journalist’s critical book about Castro’s Cuba.

Garcia Marquez can on occasion dismay his many admirers. Two years ago a former comrade-in-arms of Castro in the fight to overthrow the Batista regime was released after serving a 20-year jail sentence for opposing Dr Castro’s decision to align Cuba with the Communist bloc. Garcia Marquez somewhat coldly dismissed the victim, who had been condemned for plotting to

overthrow Dr. Castro, as a “traitor” to the revolution.

Cortazar has also disappointed his admirers from time to time. Recently, for example, he excused the Nicaraguan Sandinista Government’s repeated closings of “La Prensa” — the Managua daily which was a symbol of opposition during the reign of the hated Somoza dynasty — by casually observing that it was, in as many words, just one of those things that happen after any revolution.

The Cuban revolution has to its credit some indisputable achievements. Infant mortality is the lowest in Latin America, life expectancy the highest, illiteracy has been eradicated. But the price, as Arenas argues, has been high in terms of personal freedom, the very freedom that men like Cortazar and Garcia Marquez as individuals hold so dear —

Copyright, London Observer Service.